THINK! AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK…

I followed up with an executive client recently whose biggest issue was that his GTD Weekly Review, when he “really did it right,” took sometimes 3–4 hours. He wondered if he was doing something wrong. I asked if it was worthwhile doing the review, and he admitted that it was critical to stay on top, but that it was “work” to keep it up. It didn’t ultimately seem to save him more time.

The truth is, it probably won’t save you more time—well, it will, but you will need that extra time to do the reviews and keep lists and categories of items current. Yes, you can get better and faster at how you do it. But it requires investment, no matter how good you are at it. As a matter of fact, the less you have time to do it, the more time you usually need to spend with it!

No personal management system can possibly come close to creating the perfect algorithm that will tie in all the factors of time, people, projects, actions, and support information with the infinite number of variables that go into our thinking about priorities, interests, and commitments. That’s why it becomes critical—once these are somehow objectified into an external system—that they be put in front of our conscious thinking process at least once a week, to get it all recalibrated to match our new realities. And I guarantee that there are some intuitive “Aha’s” lying dormant, only to be triggered by putting reminders about all the meaningful aspects of our life and work in front of our face on a regular basis.

The Weekly Review really is the glue that keeps it all together. And I know there are people out there trying to implement GTD who haven’t tried it. So until then, I must get up on the rooftop and yell at my loudest: “Weekly Review! Weekly Review! Weekly Review!”

Discover what it’s like to have the freedom to be dumb and happy, just following your intuitive hunches, 6.5 days of the week!

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